To the gates of Jerusalem : the diaries and papers of James G. McDonald, 1945-1947 (book review)

Reviews this volume, the third in a series of James G. McDonald\u27s edited diaries and papers, covers his work from 1945, with the formation of the Anglo-American Committee, through 1947, with the United Nations\u27 decision to partition Palestine between Jews and Arabs by James G McDonald, author; Norman J W Goda, ed.; Barbara McDonald Stewart, ed.; Severin Hochberg, ed.; Richard Breitman, ed

Diversity at the Ballot Box: Electoral Politics and Maine\u27s Minority Communities, Post-WWII to the Present

As this year’s Sampson Center exhibition makes clear the powerful desire to find historical inevitability in the advance toward equal opportunity for all Americans has become far more nuanced by the sometimes discomforting reminders that advances at the ballot box are neither as clear-cut nor as unconditional as we once hoped. The ancient antipathies of racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia are not so easily elided by political campaigns and elections. The pace of social consensus requires a degree of patience and continuing attention that tries the very fabric of American life while we attempt to comprehend the consequences of change wrought by our heightened understanding of the implications of diversity in American life. Table of Contents: Introduction (Selma Botman, USM President) Quiet Revolution: A Tally of Black Victories (Bob Greene, for the African American Collection) Is It Good for the Jews? Is it Good for Everyone? Maine Jewry between Civic Idealism and the Politics of Reality (Abraham J. Peck, Scholar-in-Residence for the Judaica Collection) From the Closet to the Ballot-Box: Electoral Politics and Maine’s LGBT Citizens, 1970s to the Present (Howard M. Solomon, Scholar-in-Residence for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection)https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/event_catalog/1003/thumbnail.jp

\u27Remember Me?\u27 The Life and Legacy of Jean Byers Sampson

In April 1961, Jean Byers Sampson wrote to the director of branches of the NAACP notifying him that she was involved with establishing a branch in Lewiston-Auburn. Because Jean had worked for the national branch of the NAACP in the late 1940s, she began her letter with a friendly “Remember me?” It is a short, intimate phrase that characterized how Jean worked throughout her life. “‘Remember Me?’ The Life and Legacy of Jean Byers Sampson,” the third annual event of the Sampson Center, is a tribute to how one person’s life changed Maine. Table of Contents: The Mosaic of Maine Life (Mark B. Lapping, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs 1994-2000, Interim Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, 2007-08) History of the Jean Byers Sampson Center (Susie R. Bock, Director, Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine and Head, USM Special Collections) “Remember Me?” The Life and Legacy of Jean Byers Sampson(Margaret Ann Brown, owner of Storyworks in South Portland with Abraham J. Peck, scholar-in-residence for the Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine’s Judaica Collection)https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/event_catalog/1002/thumbnail.jp

Liberating Visions: Religion and the Challenge of Change in Maine,1820 to the Present

Liberating Visions: Religion and the Challenge of Change in Maine, 1820 to the Present. Each of the Sampson Center’s three scholars has crafted an original essay related to one of the Sampson Center collections—African-American, Judaic, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender—thereby reflecting on how religious institutions have fostered minority identity and have framed social and cultural transformation. Table of Contents: Religion and Transformation (Joseph S. Wood, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs) Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine Programming (Susie Bock, Director, Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine and Head, USM Special Collections) The African American Collection “There’s a Blessing in Pressing:” Change in Maine’s African American Churches (Maureen Elgersman Lee, Associate Professor of History and Faculty Scholar for USM’s African American Collection) The Judaica Collection “Orthodox and Yet thoroughly Liberal:” Jews and Judaism in Maine Between Tradition and Change (Abraham J. Peck, Director, Academic Council for Post-Holocaust Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Studies and Scholar-in-residence for USM’s Judaica Collection) The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Collection Coming Out, Going In: Spirituality and Religion in Maine’s LGBT Communities (Howard M. Solomon, Adjunct Professor of History and Scholar-in-Residence for USM’s LGBT Collection)https://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/event_catalog/1001/thumbnail.jp

Calibration of Photomultiplier Tubes for the Fluorescence Detector of Telescope Array Experiment using a Rayleigh Scattered Laser Beam

We performed photometric calibration of the PhotoMultiplier Tube (PMT) and readout electronics used for the new fluorescence detectors of the Telescope Array (TA) experiment using Rayleigh scattered photons from a pulsed nitrogen laser beam. The experimental setup, measurement procedure, and results of calibration are described. The total systematic uncertainty of the calibration is estimated to be 7.2%. An additional uncertainty of 3.7% is introduced by the transport of the calibrated PMTs from the laboratory to the TA experimental site.Comment: 43 pages, 15 figure

History Department 2020 Summer Reading Suggestions

This list of readings was collected by USM History Department faculty at the University of Southern Maine. From the guide: An important part of the anti-racist work of dismantling racial inequities is self-education, doing the work of learning about the hundreds of years of oppression and injustice that provide the context to our contemporary struggles. For historians, context is key to all that we do. Faculty members in the Department of History at USM have come together to suggest a series of texts that we find both personally significant and think will be helpful in coming to a greater understanding of the events, actions, and inactions that have led us to this current moment in the United States and globally. This list reflects our diverse geographical areas of expertise and research, and is by no means exhaustive. We continue to learn from one another, and from our students. We welcome student suggestions on books and pieces you think we should read; this is a conversation. We encourage you to cast a wide net in your anti-racist reading and learning. Here is a place to start

CSSs in a sample of B2 radio sources of intermediate strength

We present radio observations of 19 candidate compact steep-spectrum (CSS) objects selected from a well-defined, complete sample of 52 B2 radio sources of intermediate strength. These observations were made with the VLA A-array at 4.835 GHz. The radio structures of the entire sample are summarised and the brightness asymmetries within the compact sources are compared with those of the more extended ones, as well as with those in the 3CRR sample and the CSSs from the B3-VLA sample. About 25 per cent of the CSS sources exhibit large brightness asymmetries, with a flux density ratio for the opposing lobes of $>$5, possibly due to interaction of the jets with infalling material. The corresponding percentage for the larger-sized objects is only about 5 per cent. We also investigate possible dependence of the flux density asymmetry of the lobes on redshift, since this might be affected by more interactions and mergers in the past. No such dependence is found. A few individual objects of interest are discussed in the paper.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables; accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Probing radio source environments via HI and OH absorption

We present the results of HI and OH absorption measurements towards a sample of radio sources using the Arecibo 305-m telescope and the GMRT. In total, 27 radio sources were searched for associated 21-cm HI absorption. One totally new HI absorption system was detected against the radio galaxy 3C258, while five previously known HI absorption systems, and one galaxy detected in emission, were studied with improved frequency resolution and/or sensitivity. Our sample included 17 GPS and CSS objects, 4 of which exhibit HI absorption. This detection rate of ~25% compares with a value of ~40% by Vermeulen et al. for similar sources. We detected neither OH emission nor absorption towards any of the sources that were observed at Arecibo, and estimate a limit on the abundance ratio of N(HI)/N(OH)>4x10^6 for 3C258. We have combined our results with those from other available HI searches to compile a heterogeneous sample of 96 radio sources consisting of 27 GPS, 35 CSS, 13 flat spectrum and 21 large sources. The HI absorption detection rate is highest (~45%) for the GPS sources and least for the large sources. We find HI column density to be anticorrelated with source size, as reported earlier by Pihlstr\"om et al. The HI column density shows no significant dependence on either redshift or luminosity, which are themselves strongly correlated. These results suggest that the environments of radio sources on GPS/CSS scales are similar at different redshifts. Further, in accordance with the unification scheme, the GPS/CSS galaxies have an HI detection rate of ~40% which is significantly higher than the detection rate (~20%) towards the GPS/CSS quasars. Also, the principal (strongest) absorption component detected towards GPS sources appears blue-shifted in ~65% of the cases, in agreement with the growing evidence for jet-cloud interactions.Comment: Abridged abstract, 22 pages, 21 figures, moderately revised, accepted for publication in MNRA